Asha Parekh’s gorgeously produced autobiography The Hit Girl, written in association with journalist and filmmaker Khalid Mohamed, provides a detailed account of the transformation of the suburban middle-class Mumbai resident into one of the most reliable and popular actresses of the 1960s. Born to Salma Lakdawala and Bachubhai Shah in Santa Cruz in Mumbai on October 2, 1942, Asha Parekh developed an early love f or dancing. She first appeared on the screen in a small role in Bimal Roy’s Maa in 1952, and finally got her big break as the heroine in Nasir Husain’s Dil Dekhe Dekho in 1959. She was one of the top-earning heroines in the ’60s, with such hits as Ghungat, Gharana, Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai, Love in Tokyo, Kati Patang, Teesri Manzil, MainTulsi Tere Aangan Ki and Caravan. Parekh later became a producer and also served as the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification from 1998 to 2001. These edited excerpts reveal her experiences as the censor board chief.

The preceding chairman Shakti Samanta had ably occupied the hot seat from April 1991 to June 1998. Owing to ill-health, aggravated by the restless face-offs with filmmakers who would raise a hue and cry about cuts and deletions, he had chosen to move on. “God bless you,” he had said succinctly when I met him a few days before taking over as chairperson. “All the best.” On asking for tips on how to conduct myself, he had replied, “Don’t ever buckle under pressure.”

The post of the Film Censor Board’s Chairperson is an honorary one. An Ambassador car, air-conditioned, and chauffeur to transport me on an average on alternate days from my house to the Walkeshwar office at an hour’s distance, were allocated. The Board’s Regional Officer, Sanjivani Kutty from the IAS cadre, was helpful, patiently acquainting me with the procedures of the Board and its structure made up of the local examining committees and revising committees in the various filmmaking centres (Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigarh, Kolkata) and the appellate tribunal in New Delhi. Contrary to the general perception, the chairperson does not see each and every film except in situations demanding his or her unavoidable intervention.

Within days of entering the Walkeshwar office, there was a conflagration on Deepa Mehta’s Fire, released overseas in 1996 and in India two years later after it had garnered global acclaim at several international film festivals. The bold theme of same-gender love between two women, I agreed with the censorship committees, had been depicted aesthetically without a speck of sensationalism. No one had lobbied for the film’s clearance, there was no reason to ban it at all or delete a kissing scene between Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das.

Political parties begged to differ. A hullabaloo broke out. Protests and demonstrations verging on the violent were held outside the Gaiety and Eros Cinemas where Fire was being screened. The film was alien to Indian culture, it was claimed. Sanjivani and I stuck to the collective decision, the censors would not recall the film for a second opinion. The protests by the self-appointed culture police fizzled out as they often do.

Next Zakhm (1998) sparked a face-off with Mukesh and Mahesh Bhatt. Members of the censorship committees felt it should be screened for senior police officers as a cautionary measure. The depiction of the people who set off communal riots could have caused a backlash. Mukesh Bhatt said he would take the matter to New Delhi to seek the intervention of L.K. Advani, the then Minister of Home Affairs. Moreover Mahesh Bhatt accompanied by Tanuja Chandra and others, raised abusive slogans outside the office. Some of these abuses were aimed at me personally.

After much ado, the Bhatts agreed to the Board’s decision. Visuals indicating the party affiliations of the rioters were blurred, minor cuts were imposed and Zakhm was released. The slogans raised by Mahesh did disturb me but I would like to think I emerged stronger from the personal attack. I was doing my job. I was certainly not taking an individual, arbitrary stand for or against Zakhm.

Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998) too, was a storm in a tea cup. It was certified ‘A’ for ‘Adults Only’ with a few cuts by the examining and revising committees. Absolutely agitated he insisted on a ‘U’ certificate for universal exhibition. So what if it had been given an ‘R’ (restricted) certificate in the UK where it was produced? Shekhar sought the support of the media to browbeat the censors, editorials were written. Some columns and TV channels described me as a ‘dictator’ and ‘Hitler’. Shekhar took the case to the appellate tribunal where it was cleared with an ‘UA’ certificate by its chairman Justice Lentin. End of story.

Reasoning works. China Gate (1998) could have caused a stir for its scene showing a dog urinating on an army man’s trousers as well as the titillating close-ups of Urmila Matondkar during the item number ‘Chhamma Chhamma Baaje Re’. The examining committee had raised valid objections. The film’s director Raj Kumar Santoshi, believe it or not, agreed with them without so much as an argument. And believe it or not again, the censors agreed to pass a provocative dance move by American dancers in Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999) when Randhir and Rishi Kapoor argued logically for its retention.

Saawan Kumar Tak’s Mother ’98 (1999) was an ordeal. One of its songs, ‘Biwi Cheez Hai Sajawat Ki’ (A wife is a decorative object), picturised on Rekha was found to be offensive. I agreed with the members of the committees, it was insulting to women and our view was supported by the higher-ups in the Central Government. We were told to stick to the decision of deleting the song in its entirety.

Mr Tak lashed out against the censors in interviews. On being asked by journalists for my reactions to his nasty remarks, I replied right back without mincing any words. I should not have, I should have ignored Mr Tak who had raised a hue and cry in vain. The song was deleted.

Odd cases would show up, like two women film producers who came over to the office and started weeping copiously. They had mortgaged their house to produce a sex-and-horror film packed with frontal nudity and pornographic love-making scenes. There was no way the film could be passed unless it was cut drastically. The producers withdrew their application for censorship.

In the case of the Abbas-Mustan directed Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001), the Ministry had called asking for the Chairperson to view the film personally. The producer was not making the print available. Hence a legal notice was pasted on the door of his office. Consequently a screening was arranged at a preview theatre. After the screening, several double meaning dialogue spoken for the film’s comedy track by Johnny Lever and Laxmikant Berde were deleted. Reportedly the film was financed by underworld elements and producer Bharat Shah. The CBI had seized several prints of the film up for release. Those charges did not fall within the purview of the Censor Board. Subsequently the film was released with cuts and the law took its own course about its financing.

Flare-ups could be often handled tactfully. Animal welfare activists were not willing to go with the visual of the taped ears of a goat in John Matthew Matthan’s Sarfarosh (1999) or with the shot of a chinkara hunt in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001). Maneka Gandhi was spoken to in New Delhi over the phone about Sarfarosh, and about Lagaan when she was in Mumbai for a brief visit. She saw things from the filmmaker’s perspective and in both the films, the shots were retained.

The avowed aim on my part was to censor only when it was essential in terms of excessive vulgarity and violence, degradation of women and abusive words used out of context. I had to strike a balance between carrying out the responsibilities as stated in the censorship guidelines and the filmmaker’s right to freedom of expression. I was neither radical nor a dictator, far from it. As with the creative community the censors have to remain within boundaries.

We get the cinema and the censorship we deserve, it is maintained. And this is visible on every street and corner of our cities. Not only on the screen but down the years, posters and cinema hoardings scream out loud about what to expect. The other day I was driving past the Imperial Cinema of Mumbai, where Meri Surat Teri Ankhen was premiered once upon a time. The films’ hoardings displayed for all to see were so lurid that I could not help but conclude: Salacious material easily accessible on the Internet or not, there is still a fringe audience for cheap thrills on the big screen.

The internet is an amazing space where you can watch a donkey playing football while simultaneously looking up whether the mole on your elbow is a symptom of a terminal diseases. It’s as busy as it’s big with at least 2.96 billion pages in the indexed web and over 40,000 Google search queries processed every second. If you have access to this vast expanse of information through your mobile, then you’re probably on something known as a data plan.

However, data plans or data packs are a lot like prescription pills. You need to go through a barrage of perplexing words to understand what they really do. Not to mention the call from the telecom company rattling on at 400 words per minute about a life-changing data pack which is as undecipherable as reading a doctor’s handwriting on the prescription. On top of it all, most data packs expect you to solve complex algorithms on permutations to figure out which one is the right one.

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Even the most sophisticated and evolved beings of the digital era would agree that choosing a data pack is a lot like getting stuck on a seesaw, struggling to find the right balance between getting the most out of your data and not paying for more than you need. Running out of data is frustrating, but losing the data that you paid for but couldn’t use during a busy month is outright infuriating. Shouldn’t your unused data be rolled over to the next month?

You peruse the advice available online on how to go about choosing the right data pack, most of which talks about understanding your own data usage. Armed with wisdom, you escape to your mind palace, Sherlock style, and review your access to Wifi zones, the size of the websites you regularly visit, the number of emails you send and receive, even the number of cat videos you watch. You somehow manage to figure out your daily usage which you multiply by 30 and there it is. All you need to do now is find the appropriate data pack.

Promptly ignoring the above calculations, you fall for unlimited data plans with an “all you can eat” buffet style data offering. You immediately text a code to the telecom company to activate this portal to unlimited video calls, selfies, instastories, snapchats – sky is the limit. You tell all your friends and colleagues about the genius new plan you have and how you’ve been watching funny sloth videos on YouTube all day, well, because you CAN!

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Alas, after a day of reign, you realise that your phone has run out of data. Anyone who has suffered the terms and conditions of unlimited data packs knows the importance of reading the fine print before committing yourself to one. Some plans place limits on video quality to 480p on mobile phones, some limit the speed after reaching a mark mentioned in the fine print. Is it too much to ask for a plan that lets us binge on our favourite shows on Amazon Prime, unconditionally?

You find yourself stuck in an endless loop of estimating your data usage, figuring out how you crossed your data limit and arguing with customer care about your sky-high phone bill. Exasperated, you somehow muster up the strength to do it all over again and decide to browse for more data packs. Regrettably, the website wont load on your mobile because of expired data.

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Getting the right data plan shouldn’t be this complicated a decision. Instead of getting confused by the numerous offers, focus on your usage and guide yourself out of the maze by having a clear idea of what you want. And if all you want is to enjoy unlimited calls with friends and uninterrupted Snapchat, then you know exactly what to look for in a plan.

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The Airtel Postpaid at Rs. 499 comes closest to a plan that is up front with its offerings, making it easy to choose exactly what you need. One of the best-selling Airtel Postpaid plans, the Rs. 499 pack offers 40 GB 3G/4G data that you can carry forward to the next bill cycle if unused. The pack also offers a one year subscription to Amazon Prime on the Airtel TV app.

So, next time, don’t let your frustration get the better of you. Click here to find a plan that’s right for you.

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This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Airtel and not by the Scroll editorial team.